Motor City Bengals: Miguel Cabrera's contract is insane, but it's not that bad

Apr. 1, 2014

Written by

Matt Pelc

Detroit Free Press Special Writer

Matt Pelc is editor for the Detroit Tigers blog Motor City Bengals. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Detroit Free Press nor its writers. Read his columns here most Tuesdays.

Many of my friends are devout Parrotheads. They will travel to see Jimmy Buffett play, taking in in a concert two or three times a year throughout the Midwest. Each concert averages a ticket price of around $100. My friends, and hundreds of thousands of other Parrotheads, have no problem shelling out this admission fee over and over again.

Because of this, Jimmy Buffett is a rich man, to the tune of $400 million, according to the website Celebrity Networth.

Many Hollywood celebrities make $20 million for the six months it takes to make a movie. Yet there is no outcry over Warren Buffett’s wealth or Liam Neeson making the GDP of a small country to play a guy that beats up the evil forces who took his daughter — again.

So it was curious that when Miguel Cabrera signed his massive $292 million contract extension last week that the sports world nearly collapsed onto itself.

ESPN nearly burned down — likely because the Yankees or Red Sox weren’t agreeing to the contract. Baseball executives were reportedly “appalled and disgusted” by the deal, no doubt throwing up into a nearby wastebasket with tattered remains of their big contracts of the past.

Let’s just say this up front — Miguel Cabrera’s deal is insane. There is no debating that. When comparing it to hardworking people such as police, firefighters, the armed forces, teachers, and others, including writers (sorry had to slip that one in there), it’s just crazy, and it’s not easy to wrap your mind around it.

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But when you look at it through the prism of sports, is it really that crazy?

Sports salaries continue to rise, especially in baseball where there is no form of salary cap. Don’t weep for the owners, however. Baseball is doing just fine and rakes in nearly $1.5 billion in television revenue, according to FanGraphs. This doesn’t take into account revenue for tickets and merchandise.

Those unnamed executives who always refuse to go on record when complaining to the Buster Olneys of the world have and will sign these crazy contracts. If Cabrera hit the open market, you had better believe each these execs would have signed this contract, given the OK by his owner.

This brings us to the owner in this case — Mike Ilitch. In his waning years, Ilitch has yearned for a baseball championship. He’s reached those heights multiple times in hockey and, as someone who played in the Tigers’ organization a generation ago, he wants that in baseball in the worst way.

Will Miggy live up to $30 million per year when he’s 39 and 40? I doubt it, but it ensures he can retire as a Tiger and likely enter the Hall of Fame wearing the Old English D.

So while it may be hard to understand the scope of the Miguel Cabrera extension based on our own salaries, it’s not hard to understand it when you think of it as just another celebrity receiving a ton of money to entertain us.

It’s also not hard to understand why a man, who is likely the biggest Tigers’ fan anywhere, would want to have one of the best hitters in baseball history spending the majority of his career in Detroit.